The masses have boundless creative
power. They can organize themselves and concentrate on places and
branches of work where they can give full play to their energy;
they can concentrate on production in breadth and depth and create
more and more undertakings for their own well-being.

Introductory note to "Surplus Labour Has Found
a Way Out" (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China's
Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. II.

The present upsurge of
the peasant movement is a colossal event. In a very short time, in
China's central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred
million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane,
a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be
able to hold it back. They will smash all the trammels that bind
them and rush forward along the road to liberation. They will
sweep all the imperialists, warlords, corrupt officials, local
tyrants and evil gentry into their graves. Every revolutionary
party and every revolutionary comrade will be put to the test, to
be accepted or rejected as they decide. There are three
alternatives. To march at their head and lead them? To trail
behind them, gesticulating and criticizing? Or to stand in their
way and oppose them? Every Chinese is free to choose, but events
will force you to make the choice quickly.

The high tide of social transformation in the
countryside, the high tide of co-operation, has already reached
some places and will soon sweep over the whole country. It is a
vast socialist revolutionary movement involving a rural population
of more than 800 million, and it has extremely great and worldwide
significance. We should give this movement active, enthusiastic
and systematic leadership, and not drag it back by one means or
another. Some errors are unavoidable in the process; this is
understandable, and they will not be hard to correct. Shortcomings
or mistakes found among the cadres and the peasants can be
remedied or overcome provided we give them positive help.

The masses have a potentially
inexhaustible enthusiasm for socialism. Those who can only follow
the old routine in a revolutionary period are utterly incapable of
seeing this enthusiasm. They are blind and all is dark ahead of
them. At times they go so far as to confound right and wrong and
turn things upside down. Haven't we come across enough persons of
this type? Those who simply follow the old routine invariably
underestimate the people's enthusiasm. Let something new appear
and they always disapprove and rush to oppose it. Afterwards, they
have to admit defeat and do a little self-criticism. But the next
time something new appears, they go through the same process all
over again. This is their pattern of behavior in regard to
anything and everything new. Such people are always passive,
always fail to move forward at the critical moment, and always
have to be given a shove in the back before they move a
step.

For over twenty years our Party has carried on mass
work every day, and for the past dozen years it has talked about
the mass line every day. We have always maintained that the
revolution must rely on the masses of the people, on everybody's
taking a hand, and have opposed relying merely on a few persons
issuing orders. The mass line, however, is still not being
thoroughly carried out in the work of some comrades; they still
rely solely on a handful of people working in solitude. One reason
is that, whatever they do, they are always reluctant to explain it
to the people they lead and that they do not understand why or how
to give play to the initiative and creative energy of those they
lead. Subjectively, they too want everyone to take a hand in the
work, but they do not let other people know what is to be done or
how to do it. That being the case, how can everyone be expected to
get moving and how can anything be done well? To solve this
problem the basic thing is, of course, to carry out ideological
education on the mass line, but at the same time we must teach
these comrades many concrete methods of work.

Twenty-four years of experience tell
us that the right task, policy and style of work invariably
conform with the demands of the masses at a given time and place
and invariably strengthen our ties with the masses, and the wrong
task, policy and style of work invariably disagree with the
demands of the masses at a given time and place and invariably
alienate us from the masses. The reason why such evils as
dogmatism, empiricism, commandism, tailism, sectarianism,
bureaucracy and an arrogant attitude in work are definitely
harmful and intolerable, and why anyone suffering from these
maladies must overcome them, is that they alienate us from the
masses.

To link
oneself with the masses, one must act in accordance with the needs
and wishes of the masses. All work done for the masses must start
from their needs and not from the desire of any individual,
however well-intentioned. It often happens that objectively the
masses need a certain change, but subjectively they are not yet
conscious of the need, not yet willing or determined to make the
change. In such cases, we should wait patiently. We should not
make the change until, through our work, most of the masses have
become conscious of the need and are willing and determined to
carry it out. Otherwise we shall isolate ourselves from the
masses. Unless they are conscious and willing, any kind of work
that requires their participation will turn out to be a mere
formality and will fail.... There are two principles here: one is
the actual needs of the masses rather than what we fancy they
need, and the other is the wishes of the masses, who must make up
their own minds instead of our making up their minds for
them.

Our congress should call upon the whole Party
to be vigilant and to see that no comrade at any post is divorced
from the masses. It should teach every comrade to love the people
and listen attentively to the voice of the masses; to identify
himself with the masses wherever he goes and, instead of standing
above them, to immerse himself among them; and, according to their
present level, to awaken them or raise their political
consciousness and help them gradually to organize themselves
voluntarily and to set going all essential struggles permitted by
the internal and external circumstances of the given time and
place.

If
we tried to go on the offensive when the masses are not yet
awakened, that would be adventurism. If we insisted on leading the
masses to do anything against their will, we would certainly
fail. If we did not advance when the masses demand advance, that
would be Right opportunism.

Commandism is wrong
in any type of work, because in overstepping the level of
political consciousness of the masses and violating the principle
of voluntary mass action it reflects the disease of
impetuosity. Our comrades must not assume that everything they
themselves understand is understood by the masses. Whether the
masses understand it and are ready to take action can be
discovered only by going into their midst and making
investigations. If we do so, we can avoid commandism. Tailism in
any type of work is also wrong, because in falling below the level
of political consciousness of the masses and violating the
principle of leading the masses forward it reflects the disease of
dilatoriness. Our comrades must not assume that the masses have no
understanding of what they do not yet understand. It often happens
that the masses outstrip us and are eager to advance a step and
that nevertheless our comrades fail to act as leaders of the
masses and tail behind certain backward elements, reflecting their
views and, moreover, mistaking them for those of the broad
masses.

Take
the ideas of the masses and concentrate them, then go to the
masses, persevere in the ideas and carry them through, so as to
form correct ideas of leadership - such is the basic method of
leadership.

In all the practical work of our Party,
all correct leadership is necessarily "from the masses, to
the masses". This means: take the ideas of the masses
(scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through
study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go
to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the
masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate
them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such
action. Then once again concentrate ideas from the masses and once
again go to the masses so that the ideas are persevered in and
carried through. And so on, over and over again in an endless
spiral, with the ideas becoming more correct, more vital and
richer each time. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge.

Ibid., p. 119.

We should go to the masses and
learn from them, synthesize their experience into better,
articulated principles and methods, then do propaganda among the
masses, and call upon them to put these principles and methods
into practice so as to solve their problems and help them achieve
liberation and happiness.

There are people in our leading organs in some
places that think that it is enough for the leaders alone to know
the Party's policies and that there is no need to let the masses
know them. This is one of the basic reasons why some of our work
cannot be done well.

The
masses in any given place are generally composed of three parts,
the relatively active, the intermediate and the relatively
backward. The leaders must therefore be skilled in uniting the
small number of active elements around the leadership and must
rely on them to raise the level of the intermediate elements and
to win over the backward elements.

To be good at translating the Party's policy into
action of the masses, to be good at getting not only the leading
cadres but also the broad masses to understand and master every
movement and every struggle we launch - this is an art of
Marxist-Leninist leadership. It is also the dividing line that
determines whether or not we make mistakes in our work.

However active the leading group may be,
its activity will amount to fruitless effort by a handful of
people unless combined with the activity of the masses. On the
other hand, if the masses alone are active without a strong
leading group to organize their activity properly, such activity
cannot be sustained for long, or carried forward in the right
direction, or raised to a high level.

Production by the masses, the interests of the
masses, the experiences and feelings of the masses - to these the
leading cadres should pay constant attention.

Inscription for a production exhibition sponsored
by organizations directly under the Central Committee of the Party
and the General Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army, Liberation
Daily of Yenan, November 24, 1943.

We should pay close
attention to the well being of the masses, from the problems of
land and labour to those of fuel, rice, cooking oil and
salt.... All such problems concerning the well being of the masses
should be placed on our agenda. We should discuss them, adopt and
carry out decisions and check up on the results. We should help
the masses to realize that we represent their interests and that
our lives are intimately bound up with theirs. We should help them
to proceed from these things to an understanding of the higher
tasks which we have put forward, the tasks of the revolutionary
war, so that they will support the revolution and spread it
throughout the country, respond to our political appeals and fight
to the end for victory in the revolution.